An Introduction
August 3, 2015—James Stockdale, 1992
Who am I?
Perhaps we should begin with the first of Admiral Stockdale's eloquent questions. I am a mathematician. I've been fascinated by mathematics since an early age (I can remember climbing up the family bookcase when I was eight so I could reach an algebra textbook). I later studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, graduating in 2008. (At Union, I also earned minors in computer science and physics, and to this day the connections between mathematics and physics intrigue me.) I continued as a graduate student in mathematics at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, earning a master's degree in 2010 and a Ph.D. in August 2014.
Since then, I've been a postdoc at CIMAT, a mathematical research institute in Guanajuato, México. I study representations of Lie groups and analysis on homogeneous spaces. Currently my interests lie in direct-limit Lie groups (a type of infinite-dimensional Lie group) and Toeplitz operators on bounded symmetric domains.
Why am I here?
I'm going to try out academic blogging for a bit to see what it's like. I intend to post little bits of news from my professional life from time to time, and also to discuss mathematical ideas in an informal way. I don't intend to spend too much time on it, because research and teaching take priority, but writing is a good thing to be in the habit of practicing.
In addition, I will be teaching the first-semester class in Real Analysis for incoming master's-degree students at CIMAT this fall. I may end up posting bits of supplemental material here that my students might benefit from. I really don't know what will happen with this space. I might end up posting a bit and deciding that it's not worth the time. Or it might end up becoming an ongoing project. We'll see.
I'll end on a technical note. Since I am hosting this blog on my professional website at CIMAT, I am merely coding this in static HTML. If anyone has a comment or question, feel free to email me. If for some reason someone ever wanted to make a public comment, that might be a possibility. I probably wouldn't move everything to a fully-fledged content-management system unless there was for some reason a heavy demand for interaction. That probably won't happen. I also want to make it clear that everything I say here is my own opinion and may not agree with the views of CIMAT or any of its other employees.